Clegg’s pledge to be different (From Hampshire Chronicle)
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Lib Dem leader visits Prysmian Cables’ Bishopstoke plant
6:40am Friday 16th April 2010 in Politics By Mel Adams
Clegg’s pledge to be different
LIBERAL Democrat leader Nick Clegg flew into Hampshire for a tour of a cable factory in Eastleigh and insisted a vote for his party was not a wasted one.
He said Labour and Tories had taken turns making the “same old mistakes” over the past 65 years, and his party offered “something different”.
Mr Clegg said that the Lib Dems offer fairer taxes, better schooling, and would split up the banks and make them lend to households and businesses, instead of hoarding taxpayer bailout cash.
He refused to say how Lib Dems would play kingmaker in a hung parliament, but insisted they would stick to their priorities “whatever the result”
of the general election.
His visit to Prysmian Cables’ Bishopstoke plant, in Chickenhall Lane, was part of a tour of key election battlegrounds.
Eastleigh MP and former leadership rival Chris Huhne holds a slim majority.
Arriving by plane from Glasgow — later insisting the carbon emissions would be offset — Mr Clegg told assembled workers that their taxes would go up under Labour and the Tories, but the Lib Dem plan to raise the income tax threshold to £10,000 would put “money back in their pockets”.
He said: “If you want something different, if you want something fair, then the Liberal Democrats give you that change, change that works for you.”
Mr Huhne has been championing calls from bosses at Prysmian Cables for a clampdown on cheap poor quality cable imports, blamed for one quarter of electrical fires, that are threatening the plant and its 450 workers.
Some workers seemed impressed by Mr Clegg, but employee Alan Kitcher was not one of them.
Mr Kitcher, 26, said: “He didn’t take any questions. He could just have listened a bit more.”
He said Mr Clegg’s speech “sounded like sound bites” and was “just what I expected him to say — nothing new really”.
He said he wanted change but was “not particularly” convinced by the Lib Dems.
